To Peace
by Lupienne
Summary: Maggie Greene thinks she's laid her issues with Negan to rest in her mind. Yet, she can't stop thinking about him. (AU/Comic-based off Issue #174. Contains Comic spoilers.)


_A/N: Hey guys! I've got another comic-based fic, thus containing spoilers for the comic (though the TV show actually using these plotlines in the future is a mystery. So, consider this a possible spoiler warning)_

 _This short thang is based off Issue #174 and the recent revelation by Robert Kirkman that the original script for #174 involved Maggie shooting Negan dead instead of sparing his life._

* * *

 _ **To Peace** _

by Lupienne

* * *

" **She hadn't intended to shoot him in that moment, but something inside her makes her pull the trigger. She's upset and leaves him dead in his lonely little house." - Robert Kirkman, 'The Quotable Negan**

* * *

It had been two months since she'd been with Dante. Two months of rebuilding the Hilltop. Two months, with days of joy and days of drudgery.

It had been two months since Maggie had pulled the trigger and slain the monster.

She didn't feel like Saint George of the fallen dragon. The deed wormed into her brain at odd hours and she felt that sick pang of regret deep in her belly again. She felt it…and _hated_ it. It shouldn't be felt. Not for _him_.

But she felt it, nonetheless.

She only knew one way to put this to rest. And that was… to put _him_ to rest. It wasn't easy for the leader of Hilltop to sneak out unnoticed. She set a still-resistant Sophia and Dante up for a day of bonding. Sophia wanted to learn to care for the horses. And Dante knew those things. He seemed to know she was on some kind of private mission, and though she knew he was curious… he hadn't questioned it.

She thought of the soft adoration in his eyes. This was foolish, but she rode onwards. She told herself… there would be nothing left. There had been Walkers nearby that day – there were _always_ Walkers nearby, and feral dogs and coyotes would have scattered his corpse by now.

Still, she rode, the shovel rattling alongside the saddle.

At his old home, or what he'd adopted as a home, Maggie dismounted and approached the door. It was still open. The cross he'd erected was still there, but drooping further to one side. The pot with the sunflower contained the withered stalk. She stopped to tighten the wire on the cross, straightening it once more.

She stared down at the crude memorial.

 _Do you remember her face? Your wife's?_

 _ **Clear as day.**_

A few feet from the door, she found what was probably his leg. A bone inside a boot. They looked like they could be Negan's boots, anyway, but she couldn't be sure. She dropped it alongside the flowerpot. She scanned the area, finding more scattered bones and a ripped scrap of denim. They could be his… they could be from the people who had once lived here…in another world. They could be Walker bones, but she collected them all under one arm like firewood, and dropped them by the pot.

"Ok. Let's go in…" She muttered, steeling herself. Inside, she found a skull in close proximity to the thick leather jacket. Strewn bits of a spine. Everything was stripped clean of flesh. Some bones bore teeth marks, human and canine alike. But there was the skull, pristine white and laying there… like an offering left for her. She knelt and gripped the skull. Turning it, turning until the grinning teeth and black sockets stared up at her. There it was. The bullet hole over his right eye.

 _ **Pull the trigger, Maggie. Do it! Please.**_

She gripped his skull tight, her nails digging into the white bone, glaring down into the two black holes. "Damn you. I didn't want to."

 _I did want to._

She was going to spare him. Leave him to rot in his squalid guilt. Leave him to fucking decay alive. Seeing Negan there, crying on his knees, begging her… _begging_ and knowing he _meant it…_

 _ **Please! Please.**_

Well. She was going to put that gun away. She was going to leave him and never look back, and if he so wished, his own hands could do his dirty work -

Long ago, the earthquakes of grief had settled. The broken structure of her soul had fallen into some new shape. But here and there, an aftershock still tremored through her. Sometimes the empty gaze came back, sometimes a spike of rage struck that scared her. And here it came, an aftershock and it clenched her and without thinking – without even feeling it – it drew her back on the trigger.

It was seconds after the bang and seeing his big body fall to the side and lay curled up, and watching the red sheet out from his forehead to wash over her shoes and the accursed baseball bat before she realized.

 _I killed him. I fucking killed him._

And.

 _NO! I didn't want to kill him! I didn't mean to!_

Dante rushed in and folded his arms around her as they stared down. Already, Negan was becoming a memory. She could feel it. Soon, he'd fade from the minds of all.

Not all.

Even as his brown eyes glazed in death…she would remember how wickedly they could gleam, how they shone with golden flecks and blood-spray.

Even as his mouth went slack, no longer trembling with the passing of breath – she would remember the way he grinned, the gleam of teeth.

Even as his broad chest lay still, the machinery of his lungs halted forevermore – she would remember his inhale and exhale and how it had borne cruel laughter and taunts.

The arms – umoving – how they had _killed._

 _She_ would remember it all. She, the unwilling carrier of his torch…she had imprinted this upon herself in the flash of a muzzle, in the scent of blood and gunpowder.

 _ **It's a luxury in this world to live long enough to… to regret the things you've done…**_

There were other things now…that she would not forget. The quiet despair of a voice now silenced. The still-wet tear tracks on his cheeks. His hand, burning like a brand on her arm as he begged for death.

 _ **I truly believed it's what I needed to do.**_

"Goddamn you! You didn't _need_ to do it! You didn't need to do any of it!" She felt foolish snarling at a skull. The empty sockets gave nothing, and his stupid teeth grinned at her distress. Still fucking smirking, even now.

 _ **I want it all to end. I'm ready for this to be over!**_

"You and me both…" She sighed and clutched the skull close as she turned. Pausing for a second. She'd take the coat, but the bat could rot where it lay. He wasn't going to take _that_ with him.

She didn't want to dig too close to the cross. She wasn't sure what he'd buried there – if anything, but she wasn't going to disturb it. She paced a few feet to the left and began to shovel. The dirt was hard and full of stones. The shovel made metallic crunches as she hit pebbles and her shoes grew muddy…but her mind floated away.

She remembered.

 _Killing Thomas Richards, the man who had taken away her little sisters. Shooting him in the back. It had felt good. She barely thought of the man now – she thought of her sisters…but not of their killer._

 _The shakes had come hours later. Glenn had been the one to hold her then, whispering that it was alright. And she knew it was alright, he had needed to die, but…_

 _Perhaps the shakes were just the sign that this wasn't how things were_ _ **supposed**_ _to be._

 _ **…the bottom of humanity…**_

 _Dante had been the one to hold her two months ago, when the shakes had come again and her breath rattled in panicked gasps._

She leaned down and used both hands to pry free a large rock, hefting it off to the side.

 _The feel of a coarse rope, chafing against her neck. Burning. The churning of her feet and the realization –_ _ **no. I can't come back from this.**_

 _I couldn't take anymore._

She had **thought** she couldn't take anymore. But life didn't give a fuck if it shoved you to the wall – or if it shoved you _through_ the wall and down a flight of stairs.

She was about two feet down. Two feet deep was fine for a skull and bones. But no, it was not far enough.

 _Her own screams deafening her as she clenched Doctor Carson's hand tight. As he told her to breathe and she breathed and she felt she would die and then - he was here. Hershel. The boy with Glenn's eyes. She had been so scared that she would feel nothing or that she would feel nothing but_ _ **pain**_ _– but when his newborn skin touched hers… she felt another piece of her broken structure resurrect._

Three feet down. She paused, panting, and observed her hands. Years ago, she might have blistered from this kind of activity, but her hands bore no signs of wear. Toughened to survive in this world.

She glanced over to Negan's skull and it was just that. A skull. An empty shell abandoned by its owner.

"You could have taken more. You could have lived. You didn't think you could have… but you could." Whether she wanted him to live or die was a moot point. He was dead and that was that. That _had_ to be that.

She arranged the gathered bones in the grave, creating a niche in which she would lay that last part of him. She took up the skull and wrapped it in his leather jacket. He'd loved that damn jacket, anyone could see that. She knelt and tucked it at the bottom of the grave, and then she covered it over and stamped down the dirt.

There was a cross and a memorial he'd made, and now he was laid alongside it, alongside whatever he'd deemed important enough to bury and give offerings of flowers.

 _ **That's a pain I'm all too familiar with.**_

She brushed off her hands. Cleared her throat. "You're gone now. Laid to rest. I hope… you find some kind of closure. Like I have. Don't wait around expecting me to say you were a good man in the end – you weren't. But I had to do this for both of us."

 _So that piece of you buried under my skin will finally extrude itself – and leave me be._

She didn't wish him to Hell, or to eternal pain. There was enough suffering on this earthly plane. Enough sorrow, enough death, enough to drive her to a rope and men to murder. But the earth was turning constantly, shedding the ghosts of yesterdays and bringing the rising sun for another chance to get it right this time.

 _There's enough suffering in this life. It has to end sometime. For all of us. It needs to_ _ **stop.**_

"Whether I… or _you…._ feel you deserve it…I want you to be at peace. You need it and I hope you have it. I need it for you."

She drew her hand across her nose, blinked away tears – and thought of Glenn. She rode away from the house and Negan – for good this time -

And turned her thoughts to Dante. To Sophia. To Hershel.

To home.

 ** _To peace._**

* * *

 ** _A/N: Hey guys! If you enjoyed this story, reviews are 100% appreciated!  
_**


End file.
